The owner of a 4-inch diameter crystal ball got a nasty shock when she returned from visiting a chum to find the vitreous ornament had torched her flat.
According to the Sun, the "unforeseen" blaze in Worle, Somerset, was caused by the £30 sphere focusing the sun's rays onto the back of 53-year-old Kim Yeates's telly, which …

COMMENTS

Unforeseen indeed

This almost happened to me - the (Pagan) wife used to keep hers on the kitchen window sill, until we discovered a series of pretty curved scorch marks had mysteriously appeared next to it. Looked a little like the output from a Campbell-Stokes sunshine recorder.

my crystal ball tells me

next time...

Campbell-Stokes attack!

Silly question: Why do people have no insurance?

But anyways, its Basic Physics™. Anything in the focal point of a large lens will fry, given enough sunlight. The mount of the ball is meant to keep things away from the focal trail. Its the opposite with a Campbell-Stokes recorder where the hours of sunshine are recorded as burn marks in a strip of special paper:

Ha ha ha!

Not that uncommon...

I recall my school was very nearly burnt to the ground by a roundbottom flask of water left on a window sill.. fortunatly (for the school not the students) the smouldering wooden sill filled the room with smoke before it ignited into flame.. so was only a case of smoke damage which was bad enough...

Surely this could happen with numerous types of Vase??

I have also had concerns about the lensing effect of certain bathroom window glass after I found melted toothbrush in a friends bathroom...

@ ElNumbre

Re:the sun?

"The sun? Actually shining? THIS summer? Who could possibly have expected that?"

Are you fucking kidding me? It hasn't been consistent, but I've been melting for approximately 3/4 of this summer and still am. If this isn't sunny enough maybe try moving to the Sahara, because despite what you might think we've had plenty.

Get a refund

similar happenings

remember reading of a similar incident before ... and with google to the rescue found it

How one sunbeam turned a tycoon's mansion to ashes

A BLAZE that caused millions of pounds damage to a tycoon's mansion was started by a freak accident involving a towel and a shaving mirror. The unique chain of events that devastated the eight-bedroom home of Sir Peter Michael, chairman of Classic FM radio, was explained by an expert.

The concave mirror acted as a magnifying glass, concentrating the sun's rays into a single point, said Berkshire's fire brigade safety officer Greg Boys. At that point, the temperature rose to 200C, causing the towel to burst into flames. Mr Boys said four factors had to combine to start the fire at the Grade 11 listed building near Hungerford.

Firstly, the sun would have to be low enough to shine directly on the bathroom mirror. Then the mirror would have to be in exactly the right position to direct the magnified rays on to the towel. Also, the towel would have to he at the precise spot where the rays converged. Finally, there would have to be material nearby for the fire to take hold. "A centimetre out in any of the first three factors could well have prevented the fire from ever taking place," said Mr Boys. "It was a chance in a million."

Firemen hit on the mirror theory while investigating the blaze. Mr Boys added: "We had to wait for ideal conditions so we could test that theory out. "Eventually, they all came together and we dashed over to the house, set up the mirror and towel and waited to see what happened. "What we saw confirmed the theory. The sun hit the mirror, converging on the towel, which was ablaze within minutes."

Sir Peter, 58, said: "It just makes you think how unfair life can be."

Ah...

I'd have put this in the "dubious" file if not for Rainy Rat's comment, on account of unsuccessful experiments I did to confirm the old "forest fires from pop bottles" stories that were rampant when I were a lad, and stated unequivocally that in my view it would be more likely that the TV caught fire all on it's own due to it being a superannuated piece of junk with accumulated years of dust in it that had been permanently connected to the 240v mains electricity supply since Azathoth-knows when.

But I won't now.

I *will* remove the wife's snowglobe from the front windowshelf though, formerly believed to be a harmless piece of tat but now revealed as a domicilophagic fire hazard.

Insurance

I don't know how it is in the UK, or even all of the US, but I can speak about my own renter's insurance policy. I'm paying a couple hundred dollars per year, and if I need to file a claim, it will almost surely be denied. The reason? According to the fine print, you must have a receipt for everything you claim. My greatest (and most expensive) loss would be my collection of CDs and DVDs, many of which are priceless to me since they're long out-of-print, but I'd get nothing for them since I don't have receipts for them. This does, of course, raise the issue of whether or not the insurance company will cover items received as a gift, since you obviously won't have a receipt for a gift.

deshepard

More techologically advanced...

Had a homebuilt aircraft on our airport that nearly self-ignited from the sun shining through the heavy plexiglass tilt canopy. The owner left it tilted up and it caught the sun just right and developed a focal point. Fortunately someone smelled smoke as it was trying to burn a hole through the seat cushions.

@Mark Macnair

That has *got* to be one of the best laughs I have had this year (excpet for BOFH, natch). Now if you will excuse me, I have to go speak to a manky old white dragon about copyright on a song I heard recently...